


The Return

by startrekto221B



Series: What John Would Have Wanted [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, John is in exile, M/M, Sherlock falls in love with Mary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekto221B/pseuds/startrekto221B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Third Part]<br/>Series 3 AU where John shoots Magnussen instead of Sherlock. He avoids a public trial when Mycroft covers it up and sends him into exile. John kisses Sherlock before he gets on the plane. And both Sherlock and Mary have to cope with his perhaps indefinite absence. Finding comfort in the most unexpected way imaginable…</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return

Mary and Sherlock move slowly. Carefully. Because they’ve both been hurt and lost so much and so when they do touch they treat each other first like glass, then as flesh and bone. The nightmares don’t stop. The living nightmare of having lost John of course persists. And then there are ones confined to the dark. Except now when Sherlock wakes up, Mary is there. When Mary wakes up, Sherlock is there. They’re not sure what they’ve become. But somehow, somewhere along the way, they’ve become more whole.

They move slowly. But slowly, surely, they do move forward. Sometimes they don’t even realize it.

One day during a case Sherlock takes Mary’s hand in his. She doesn’t let go.

They rarely kiss, because every time afterward they have to back away, busy themselves with something else, because if they continue, they don’t know how far this might go. How far they want to go. But one day when they get home, and they’re laughing and Sherlock feels something from a part of his heart he thought long dead, so he kisses Mary. She kisses back. She doesn’t let go.

One day they run to the banks of the Thames and a madman with a club strikes Sherlock in the chest. There is blood, a lot of blood. There is an ambulance. She thinks she’s done it again. Fallen in love and lost. She wonders how she might tell Emily. Tell her that another father is gone. But Sherlock comes back, he pulls through, and when he comes up Emily and Mary embrace him so tightly he can barely breathe. He doesn’t let go.

When Emily is nine years old they ask her what she wants for her birthday. She asks them to get married. They say they can’t. She asks why, don’t you love each other? Don’t you want to stay together and live together forever? There’s no such thing as forever, Sherlock says. We only have one life, Mary says. John would want us to be happy, wherever he is, I know it, I can feel it, she says sadly. Marry me, Sherlock says suddenly. She doesn’t say no.

***

The second wedding is not like the first. There is no church wedding at all. They go to the office of a judge, have it certified, and are home in time to pick up Emily from school. Mary marvels at the fact that almost nothing changes. Marriage, like everything else Sherlock has done for them, is simply a promise. A promise that this, whatever they have, is what he wants.

But a few nights later, Sherlock explains it all to her in a way that she’s never heard from him before. How he fell in love with John Watson. How he lost him. How it all came crashing down after the first wedding when he realized he had been in love with his best friend all along. It’s a strange confession to make, Mary realizes. But after all this time, she understands.

And that night they stop moving slowly. Stop dancing. When Sherlock makes love to her Mary knows why he made his confession. He had to give her something before he took something. He had to let her know him completely in case she regretted her choice, in case she didn’t like what she saw. But she loved him for this, for everything. And she didn’t feel guilty anymore.

***

Emily was fifteen when she opened the door and let in a haggard looking man who said he knew her mother. He looked sad when he saw her, and he looked familiar, oh so familiar, but she had never in her life seen someone this broken and gaunt.

She told him to wait upstairs, she would go out and get her mother, she was probably at New Scotland Yard anyway.

The stranger looked around at the flat. He sat down in his old chair.

“I’ve seen you before,” a dark-haired boy said.

“What’s your name, son?” the stranger asked.

“John Watson-Holmes Jr.”


End file.
